Reconsidering Gender Bias in Intra-Household Allocation in India

Detecting gender discrimination among children in the intra-household allocation of goods from household surveys has often proven to be difficult. This paper uses some of the commonly used techniques in this field to analyze education expenditures in India. Contrary to most previous research, I find evidence of discrimination against girls. Results at the all-India level are robust to the statistical method and the education expenditure measure, while they are more sensitive to changes in the analysis at the state level. In general, girls experience gender discrimination especially from age 10 onwards, with almost universal disadvantage in the amount of education expenditures in the group of 15-19 year olds.gender discrimination, India, intra-household allocation, education expenditures

Ethnic Self-Identification of First-Generation Immigrants

This paper uses the concept of ethnic self-identification of immigrants in a twodimensional framework. It acknowledges the fact that attachments to the home and the host country are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There are three possible paths of adjustment from separation at entry, namely the transitions to assimilation, integration and marginalization. We analyze the determinants of ethnic selfidentification in this process using samples of first-generation immigrants for males and females separately, and controlling for pre- and post-migration characteristics. We find strong gender differences and the unimportance of a wide range of premigration characteristics like religion and education at home.Ethnic self-identification, first-generation immigrants, gender, ethnicity

Older Adults’ Perspectives, Experiences, and Expectations of Ageing in England

  Background: Pessimism about ageing can have negative impacts on older people’s health and wellbeing and foster negative societal views of ageing and older people. These negative views can impact how people age, with more negative views producing more negative outcomes. To reduce ageism in society, concepts such as ageing well have been developed. However, our understanding of what ageing and ageing well means to older adults is limited. In this study, we will explore the perceptions, experiences, and expectations of ageing of older adults in England and develop a theory of ageing and ageing well. Methods/Design: A constructivist grounded theory approach will be used to interview 30-60 older adults from diverse backgrounds and locations in England. We will include healthy adults, adults with physical illnesses, people with dementia, and carers of people with dementia. Discussion: The findings will help to provide much needed information about whether people can age well, and what is needed to achieve this for people from diverse backgrounds. This could help to develop and highlight interventions and services needed to effectively meet the needs of the diverse ageing population. This could highlight action points for providing adequate targeted services and care and support for people as they age

A mitokondriális ATP-szenzitív káliumcsatorna aktiválásával létrehozott neuroprotekció mechanizmusa – egy új neuroprotektív stratégia vizsgálata = The mechanism of neuroprotection afforded by activation of mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channels in the newborn – a novel neuroprotective experimental approach.

Az újszülöttkori agyi hipoxiát/iszkémiát követő idegrendszeri károsodások kialakulásában direkt neuronális mechanizmusok, valamint az ún. neurovaszkuláris egység diszfunkciója is fontos szerepet játszanak. Vizsgálatainkban a mitokondriumok belső membránjában található ATP-szenzitív káliumioncsatornák (mitoKATP) direkt farmakológiai aktivátorai által közvetített ún. farmakológiai prekondicionálást vizsgáltuk, ill. azt, hogy más farmakológiai támadáspontú vegyületek hasonló prekondicionáló hatása kapcsolatba hozható-e a mitoKATP vel. Ezeknek a vizsgálatoknak legfontosabb eredménye az, hogy míg a szelektív mitoKATP nyitók nem okoznak feltétlenül mitokondriális eredetű reaktív oxigénmetabolit (ROS) termelést, más hatékony farmakonok gyakran nem specifikus mitokondriális támadáspontokon, a mitokondriális ROS termeltetésén keresztül hozzák létre a prekondicionált fenotipust. In vivo vizsgálatainkban a neurovaszkuláris egység diszfunkcióját hipoxia/iszkémia érzékeny cerebrovaszkuláris érreakciók segítségével határoztuk meg. Kísérleti eredményeink egyrészt új információkkal gazdagították az érfunkciók károsodásának patomechanizmusát, másrészt sikerült új támadáspontokat azonosítani, melyek klinikai transzlációs kutatások alapját képezhetik, melyek az újszülöttkori hipoxiás/iszkémiás enkefalopátia kezelésében segíthetnek. | Following neonatal cerebral hipoxic/ischemic stress direct neuronal injury and the dysfunction of the so-called neurovascular unit both contribute to the developing encephalopathy. The pharmacological preconditioning induced by the activators of the mitochondrial ATP-sensitive potassium channels (mitoKATP) was investigated and whether other drugs with different primary actions would also trigger preconditioning through the involvement of mitoKATP. The most important message emanating from these studies was that though selective mitoKATP openers do not elevate mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, other effectively preconditioning drugs often create the preconditioned phenotype through non-specific actions on mitochondria mediated by ROS. lin the inner In our in vivo studies, neurovascular dysfunction was assessed with hypoxia/ischemia sensitive cerebrovascular responses. Our results provided new insights into the mechanism of altered cerebrovascular reactivity after hypoxic/ischemic stress, and they also identified new targets which after further translational studies may yield new therapies to treat hypoxic/ischemic encephalopathy in the newborn

Dreidimensional nanostrukturierte und superhydrophobe mikrofluidische Systeme zur Tröpfchengenerierung und -handhabung

Neue Mikrofluidiksysteme bieten die Möglichkeit für innovative biomedizinische Anwendungen, wie die Verkapselung von einzelnen Zellen, eingesetzt zu werden. Tröpfchenbasierte Systeme sind in der Lage biologische Prozesse, die in kleinen Tröpfchen ablaufen, präzise nach Ort und Zeit aufzulösen, wobei die Tröpfchen ein konstantes Tröpfchenvolumen aufweisen müssen. Ein Ansatz ist, mikrofluidische Systeme mit superhydrophoben Kanälen zu fertigen, was im Rahmen dieser Arbeit gezeigt wurde

The influence of physical activity on information: processing in consumer decision making

When people engage in physical activity they often report that it alters the way they think and feel. These lay beliefs are generally supported by research on the cognitive benefits of physical activity. But despite the evidence on benefits of physical activity for cognition, little research has investigated whether physical activity has any effect on judgment and decision making, particularly in unrelated domains such as consumer decision making. This thesis presents seven empirical studies which demonstrate that both regular and single bouts of physical activity influence consumers’ product judgments and decision making. Specifically, the key results indicate that physical activity leads decision makers to weigh different product information more appropriately. The results were robust to the inclusion of various control variables. In the first part of this thesis, five studies investigate the effect of physical activity on decision makers’ ability to rely on relevant versus irrelevant information. Past research has shown that when faced with irrelevant product information, consumers often find it difficult to ignore the irrelevant information, and typically dilute their judgments (i.e. their judgments are less extreme). In contrast, the results of this research show that regular physical activity aids people’s ability to focus on relevant information and ignore irrelevant information in product judgments. In the second part of this thesis, three further studies indicate that physical activity influences attribute weighting in consumer decisions that require trade-offs between desirability and feasibility attributes. Decision makers tend to place a lot of emphasis on the desirability attributes, often at the expense of feasibility attributes. The findings of this research indicate that physical activity leads consumers to not overly focus on desirability, and consider feasibility attributes more in choices that require trade-offs between them. The findings have important implications for marketing and public policy since they extend the benefits of physical activity to a novel domain – information processing in consumer decision making

Why Guarantee Employment? Three Essays on the World’s Largest Public-Works Program.

The Indian government started implementing the world’s largest public-works program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), in 2006. With a legal guarantee of 100 days of public employment per year for all rural households, NREGS is the flagship example of the resurgence of interest in public-works programs in developing countries in the last couple of years. This may be surprising given the available evidence of the limited success of such schemes in developed countries and of severe implementation problems in developing countries. My dissertation therefore seeks to understand what benefits NREGS created that may have made its introduction optimal from a government’s viewpoint despite the known drawbacks. Chapter 1 reconstructs the government algorithm that the Indian government used to assign districts to implementation phases, which can then be exploited in a regression-discontinuity design to analyze the program impacts empirically. The chapter focuses on the labor-market impacts of NREGS and sets up a household time-allocation model that allows households to take up the scheme both as an alternative form of employment and as a safety net after bad economic shocks. The empirical results suggest that the program provides a safety net but has no large other labor-market impacts. Chapter 2 uses the same empirical strategy to study the impact of the program on the Maoist conflict, which the Indian prime minister referred to as India’s biggest security challenge. The results show that violence increases in the short run, which is driven by a rise in police-initiated attacks. The paper discusses and tests the implications of a number of potential theories, but finds that the empirical patterns are most consistent with the introduction of NREGS making civilians more willing to share information on insurgents with the police, which in turn improves the police’s effectiveness in tracking down rebels. Chapter 3 analyzes the impacts of NREGS during the next general elections. My empirical results using a regression-discontinuity design suggest that both the government parties and incumbents of any party benefit from the scheme, but that these effects are concentrated in areas with high implementation quality and longer exposure to the scheme.PhDEconomicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/107155/1/lvzimmer_1.pd

Cloning of the Complete Gene for Carcinoembryonic Antigen

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a widely used tumor marker, especially in the surveillance of colonic cancer patients. Although CEA is also present in some normal tissues, it is apparently expressed at higher levels in tumorous tissues than in corresponding normal tissues. As a first step toward analyzing the regulation of expression of CEA at the transcriptional level, we have isolated and characterized a cosmid clone (cosCEA1), which contains the entire coding region of the CEA gene. A close correlation exists between the exon and deduced immunoglobulin-like domain borders. We have determined a cluster of transcriptional starts for CEA and the closely related nonspecific cross-reacting antigen (NCA) gene and have sequenced their putative promoters. Regions of sequence homology are found as far as approximately 500 nucleotides upstream from the translational starts of these genes, but farther upstream they diverge completely. In both cases we were unable to find classic TATA or CAAT boxes at their expected positions. To characterize the CEA and NCA promoters, we carried out transient transfection assays with promoter-indicator gene constructs in the CEA-producing adenocarcinoma cell line SW403, as well as in nonproducing HeLa cells. A CEA gene promoter construct, containing approximately 400 nucleotides upstream from the translational start, showed nine times higher activity in the SW403 than in the HeLa cell line. This indicates that cis-acting sequences which convey cell type-specific expression of the CEA gene are contained within this region